ds. The Old Queen's Head is a posting inn with the remains of what
was once a spacious parlour, solid with oak beams big enough for a
belfry, warmed by a broad open fireplace and offering the hospitality of
two great chimney seats. The chimney seats have lapsed into cupboards
and a stove stands where once the wealden logs roared up into the night.
But if Godstone with its Clayton Arms, or Chiddingfold with its Crown,
beckons in the passer-by to look at old oak and old walls, why should
not Nutfield?

[Illustration: _Nutfield Church._]

Nutfield's chief industry, the digging of fuller's earth, dates back to
beginnings that are now quite forgotten. The Nutfield pits are still
working, and spread over the slope on which they lie a dreary stretch of
blue and grey upturned soil as if a giant gamekeeper had been digging
out colossal ferrets. The industry is old enough and important enough
for the export of fuller's earth to have been prohibited as far back as
Edward II, and in 1693 one Edmund Warren was tried in the Exchequer for
smuggling a quantity of earth out of the country, though it was proved
to be not fuller's earth but potter's clay. But there is no doubt that
great quantities were smuggled abroad, with corresponding injury--or so
it was thought at the time--to the cloth and woollen industry of
Guildford and south-west Surrey. Later days have discovered later
methods of scouring cloth of grease, and the trade no longer makes large
demands on the pits of Nutfield. But fuller's earth has still its uses
at the toilet table, and in America other uses. I have ascertained them
exactly. It is employed to dehydrate certain oils with which the
pork-packer adulterates lard.

[Illustration: _Lingfield._]

CHAPTER XXXIX

LINGFIELD AND CROWHURST

A chapter of Hume.--The Village Cage.--The Copthorne Poachers.--A
shop for three centuries.--The green-faced Soldan.--A griffin's
hoof.--Second-best fish.--Eleanor Cobham and the
Witch.--Crowhurst.--A tree and a rubbish-heap.--An iron
tombstone.--Fifteen daughters running.--Crowhurst Place.

Lingfield is not large enough, nor enough overbuilt and railway-ridden,
to dare to the title of capital even of a distant corner of Surrey. But
it stands above and apart from the quiet country round it, like a Bible
in an old library. Near it, or in its streets, are some of the prettiest
and most ancient timber houses in the county; the churchyard with its
brick p